A Civil Beat Investigation: In Hawaii’s workers’ comp system, people with long-lasting injuries are often forced to battle doctors hand-picked by insurance companies to get treatment and disability payments.

Civil Beat Staff

Chad Blair

Chad Blair has been a writer, editor and teacher in Honolulu for more than 25 years. His job as reporter and editor is to cover Hawaii, especially how political decisions impact people and communities.

Chad has worked as a journalist for Pacific Business News, Hawaii Public Radio and Honolulu Weekly. He has taught at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu Community College, Hawaii Pacific University and Chaminade University of Honolulu.

A “military brat,” Chad was born on an Army base in Alabama and later lived with his family in Germany, Illinois, Nebraska and Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands. He earned a bachelor’s degree in English at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, where he edited the school newspaper. He also minored in Spanish and studied for a semester in Mexico.

Chad worked for a year on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, where he tracked satellites for the U.S. Air Force/NORAD. He then earned a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in American studies from UH Manoa. His dissertation, “Democracy in Hawaii: Class, Race and Gender in Local Politics” (1996), was published as “Money, Color and Sex in Hawaii Politics” (Mutual Publishing; 1998).

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